The Perfect Nanny, Leila Slimani

   This book was among many from a pile of books that were international NY Times Bestsellers for 2018. It's also a winner of a Prix Goncourt prize, whatever that is. I do believe it's a translation. So, it's another effort to get into contemporary literature. "Insanely good," is stamped at the top of the cover from Kate Hamer. I guess so. Insane is perhaps a good word, but the word good and insane in this case do not go together.

   I almost wish I hadn't read this book. I don't know what I was expecting. The perfect nanny is perfect except for the fact that she kills the children in her care. This is shown in the beginning. Slowly, we're shown the severe issues that built up Louise, the main character. A bad childhood, a bad marriage, a bad child, a bad set of debts and debtors, and a bad job, all somehow end in a wasted woman doing something terrible.

   When I say I wish I hadn't read the book, it's for this reason: I just felt queasy, uneasy, and very uncomfortable from beginning to end. Almost like I was going to take a bath in someone else's cold bathwater. That feeling never goes away. The tension doesn't snap at the end as it seems to lose its elasticity.

   Imagine Mary Poppins: the perfect nanny. Then, she falls apart and kills the Banks' kids. But, you see that in the opening scene of the movie. You know that after all the magic and the fun and dancing and singing and walks in magical places and pigeons, that Mary Poppins has already been seen killing these kids and you know that you will get to revisit the killing in gorier details at the end. That's what this book is like. Enjoy.

Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens

   I have heard the title of this book from time to time over the last year. I didn't hear many opinions on it. I just heard someone ask others' opinion of it. One of the things I want to do this year is read a few more very recent tales. Mostly I love to let time act as a literary filter. But, I have decided to change this very old habit of mine this year. I don't know if anyone actually reads my blog: but if someone does, let it be known that spoilers will exist.

   The story covers the life of a girl, nicknamed Kya. The girl lives alone and is intensely lonely. She's been abandoned by everyone: her parents, her siblings. She is all alone. A few times people try to capture her as a child in order to take better care of her, but she manages to evade them all. She meets a few men, falls in love with one who leaves her, and falls in love with the idea of life with another before he chooses another woman for his wife.

   Owens' timeline shifts back and forth between Kya's life growing up, and the mystery surrounding a young man's death. The mystery is not entirely resolved until the very end when it is shown that Kya was in fact the person responsible for the death of the young man. The motive is established: he attempts to rape her and beats her badly enough that it takes her more than a month before she is fully physically recovered. But she constantly lives with the fear of him coming upon her and further visiting violence on her.

   During the trial, it seems quite absurd that she is suspected at all for the murder of the young man. This was no accidental murder: it was coldly calculated. She had an established alibi and witnesses. Timing was a major issue. It would seem nearly impossible for her to have done it at all. But it is not until the last chapter, when she has died and her partner has discovered a hidden trap door with her secrets hiding underneath, that it is revealed that she indeed was the author of the murder.

   I cannot imagine a sheriff or any decent investigator taking the whole affair to a court. Considering the witnesses and the alibi in favor of her not having done it vs. the witnesses of her having been in the area at the time would have made it difficult for a reasonable prosecutor to make the decision of taking on such a case.

   Color: for almost the entire book, I thought Kya was black. That is, until Owens described her as a white girl. I guess I don't know southern accents very well, so maybe that had something to do with me seeing her as black when she wasn't. I thought she came from a poor black family. Also, she associated with a black family better than any of the white families. But then, suddenly, she's white. I wonder if Owens did all of this intentionally: did she try to make me think that she was black and then suddenly, near to the end, revealed that she was white? If so, why? What's the point? If she hadn't meant to deceive me, why mention the color of the girl so suddenly and concretely?

   Another thing that jumped out at me was the character of Kya. She's been alone for so long, yet seems to have a better comprehension of human behavior than someone having lived in isolation ought to have had. Further, she goes from being barely literate to an academic superstar. She has been gifted with paints and canvas and becomes an expert in them, all by herself. Becoming an expert in anything in such isolation seems almost an absurd proposition.

   I guess, in a book which does not really exist within the framework of science fiction, or horror, and attempts a semblance of realism, ends up being scrutinized for realism in a way that I don't apply to works of the other genres.

   All of that said, I think that this novel is quite a remarkable achievement for a debut novel. It was very easy to read and enjoyable.

A Case of Two Cities, Qiu Xiaolong

This is the fourth book from Qiu Xiaolong involving his star character, Chief Inspector Chen Cao. I have greatly enjoyed the series. There are a few things that bothered me about this volume. In perhaps the first 1/3-1/2 of the novel, I was bothered by bad grammar and bad grammar choices. By bad grammar, I mean run on sentences and sentence fragments. Bad grammar choices involved far too many commas creating a jerky narrative. Together, these two issues almost made me hit the delete on my Kindle. One of the style choices I didn't like in the first three books was the inclusion of poetry lines jammed together like prose, separated by the forward slash /. I suppose he might have saved a few pages and a few trees by doing so. But in an electronic copy, what's the point? In any case, that was improved upon perhaps 50%+ of the time. That is to say, in volume four, maybe greater than 50% of the time the lines of poetry were on their own lines as poetry ought to be displayed.

The story itself is otherwise fairly well told. But, while not really an issue I guess, I didn't get a very good look into China. Most of the story takes place in the US. There was the issue of corrupt people stealing Chinese public funds or taking advantage of Chinese laws meant to stimulate the economy to give themselves leverage they needed to create vast sums of personal wealth, in order to build luxurious lives for themselves in the US before their corruption caught up with them.

Chen is given 'the emperor's sword' to deal with going after Xiao. But he doesn't get far, and there is a great deal of risk to him. One detective who may have been assigned to the same file was killed. The first person he questions has information about Chen before Chen has had a chance to question him. The target becomes too dangerous for him, so the next person he goes after for questioning he gets the leverage of some pornographic photos with another official, Jiang. She ends up dead in short order. Then, Chen is sent to the US to get him out of the way or to make it possible to get a roundabout inroad towards the defecting Xiao. But he goes not for the investigation, but as a special envoy. Perhaps a kind of undercover operation where everyone knows who he is, but not exactly why he is there. This includes himself. Someone tries to kill him, but gets someone else instead.

In the end, he attempts to thwart Jiang's escape to Canada, but the outcome is left out. The end of the narrative has many loose strings. I don't object to that entirely. But I suspect many readers might. Loose strings are easier to pick up later than a narrative which is carefully and surgically sutured to have no loose ends.

I'm sure I'll get into book 5. My theory is that this book had a different editor than the first four. I tried to find out by looking up the book on Amazon and Goodreads. But getting that information isn't so easy. I'm sure if I spent more time I could eventually figure it out. But how important is it? I'll just leave my guess here.

Goodreads first three or four reviews had similar experiences to my own: enjoyed the first three novels. This novel is of inferior quality.

Cheyanne wrote, "But this case has two many murders, with victims and killers we barely get to know. We also get barely a glimpse of several recurring characters."Shabbeer Hassan wrote, "A rather disappointing book in the Inspector Chen series, with a weak story (as usual) but much weaker character motivations and horrid pastiche of Inspector Morse by Colin Dexter.

I don't know who Inspector Morse or Colin Dexter are. 

Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) wrote, "Golly I hate to say this, but I was disappointed. Four novels into the Chen Cao chronicles, I guess it's normal that the author should lose a bit of headway. The case looked promising: an older, respected cop is found dead in a fancy brothel, and Internal Security gets a "confession" from the terrified young prostitute far too quickly. What's up? Well, you won't find out here."

There were some positive reviews. Follow the links and I'm sure you'll find them at Goodreads.